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Review by HarlemAve 
member for 8.6 years, 6 visits, last login: 8.5 years ago
lodged 8.6 years ago
 Chicago,Cook,IL
 Contract price not specified.  "Reliable Connection, Great Service"
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The connection has been very reliable. Dealing with the people there is MUCH easier than with Earthlink. (I became a speedsite customer when IWC discontinued service, even though I had a contract with them).
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Review by rmdir
member for 8.9 years, 3008 visits, last login: a few hours ago
lodged 8.8 years ago
- Chicago,Cook,IL
- Contract price not specified.
 Ameritech- CLEC party: WorldCom
- "There are other choice out there"
 "No help from tech support" "Avoid them like the plague upon the Internet they are"
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After dealing with them, and not getting much response from tech support, I've decided to leave the fold. i was with IWC and Speedsite was choses for me, since they were a Focal reseller. It's bad enough they raised my rates by #20 a month, but they don't offer ANYTHING more for that money. That's right, pay more for the same thing.
Tech support is all but useless. They work 9-5 Monday-Friday. if I want people that work those hours, I'll call a bank, not an ISP. Going the extra mile is not a part of their philosophy. All was well until I got switched over to WorldComm. All of a sudden, my speed dropped by 50 percent, and I'm getting NO HELP in getting it fixed. 99 bucks a month for 300K/Sec? No thanks. I've been through a couple of DSL providers, so I know what my location is capable ofl.
Time to switch back to Covad, me thinks.
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 Review by glenview
member for 9 years, 355 visits, last login: 64 days ago
lodged 9 years ago
- Glenview,Cook,IL
- $95 per month
- Ameritech
- CLEC party: Focal
- "Connection, Speed, Email and Tech Support"
- "Price and News Server retention"
- "Cheaper ISPs are out there, but are they better"
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I started out with Focal DSL »www.focal.com/ several years ago with another ISP called IWC »home.iwc.net/. It was a 1500/512 connection for $50/month with a Static IP address. They ran a seperate line to my home strictly for DSL (a line that had no voice telephone number associated with it; basically a "home run" setup) and with a 12,000+ ft distance, I'm able to get about 1400/450 which is great.
SpeedSite bought all of the Focal DSL customers from IWC a while back, and that's how SpeedSite became my new provider. Since the change my speed hasn't changed for the worse (which is great though I did change to a Dynamic IP address), I've never had a connection outage, Email is very reliable and I've had no problems with Tech Support (though I rarely call them). My only complaints are the increase in my monthly price (it's now up to $95/month) and the poor retention rates with their News Server (some positive items regarding their News Server: it has no download speed or byte caps, and it has over 40,000 groups).
I can't comment on the News Server piece, because I'm not sure if SpeedSite maintains their own server, or if they farm it out to another company. Regarding price, I believe Focal has been raising their price and SpeedSite is passing that cost on to it's customers (which is understandable), but at $95/month, it's getting a little expensive for me, but if you can afford it, then this is a great ISP company.
My next steps are to look for another provider, be it DSL (Ameritech, Worldcom, Covad) or Cable (AT&T Broadband). See my Diary (»/dsl_diary/other/762365) for my latest update regarding the search.
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Review by quell
member for 11.5 years, 161 visits, last login: 8.1 years ago
lodged 9.6 years ago
- Naperville,Dupage,IL
- $48 per month
- (month by month)
 about 2 days- Focal
- CLEC party: Focal
- "Got switched from old isp pretty smooth change over"
- "Lack of communication still don't know how much they are going to charge per month"
- "9-5 m-f customer support little if any communication"
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I got a letter in the mail saying that my ISP (iwc.net) was selling its Focal customers to a company either named speedsite or thought port authority of chicago. Since I couldent even figure out the name of the company I figured this is something shady. The day after the change happened I got an email that said last night you should have been switched over to the new ISP. I got on line and my connection kept droping. The next day same result connection droping. I called the tech support number (only available 9-5 m-f) and they opened a trouble ticket with Focal. The next day all was fixed! Now that is service.
No problems since. I have not tried the mail accounts because why bother the ISP will change again soon anyhow. 
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Review by Dstaples42
member for 12.4 years, 20 visits, last login: 10.5 years ago
lodged 12.4 years ago
- Chicago,Cook,IL
- Contract price not specified.
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They want to charge extra based on the number of PC's at your site _for_the_same_bandwidth_.
From the rates for service document on their website,
144kbps for 6 users, $164
144kbps for 254 $603
Seems like they expect to get to charge you extra for actually using what you pay for.
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